


Backdraft

by tahirire



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Study, Episode Tag, Episode: s03e11 Mystery Spot, Gen, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-23
Updated: 2009-05-23
Packaged: 2017-10-25 15:55:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/272077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tahirire/pseuds/tahirire





	Backdraft

Backdraft

It’s like being frozen. Or like being trapped in a space that looks large, until you realize there is no way out. It's someone else’s sandbox (danger room), and the computer doesn’t respond to your frantic commands to _stop_.

So the scenario plays, over and over.

You live through every possible sequence of how it could (will) come true; your worst nightmare. You can’t tell him - he won’t remember – but you can’t take his worry so you learn how to hide the terror in your eyes.

You learn to pretend it won’t matter, what happens. You tell yourself it doesn’t because you _will_ find a way to fix it.

The frozen moment stretches for days, until you lose track of how many. You can’t eat, you don’t sleep. You wonder if your body is rotting in a morgue somewhere and this is really just the first level of Hell. No one can survive 100 days without sleep. That’s just facts. But you do.

You always survive. Everyone around you makes sure of that.

The horror and rage and loss and blood and fear builds inside of you until the pressure is so strong you can feel the cracks forming in your mind; but you can’t turn it loose. There’s nowhere for it to go. (Nowhere for _you_ to go.) So you just keep holding it all in, locked inside where you can feel it slowly eating you alive, and you think, _At least it’s feeling something,_ because you know that a time is soon coming when even that will be taken away from you.

And you know you deserve it anyway for how you’ve failed; for not being able to stop this.

And then, just as quick as the whole nightmare began, you’re out. Or so you think - just long enough for you to let your relief steal your vigilance away.

This death is not the final death, but it comes close. All of the feelings you’ve been holding down push sharply through your walls at once. The violent burst of energy rips you open, exiting your mind and burning what little was left of you away.

Deep inside, so far down you can barely feel it, is the tiniest grain of certainty that this is fixable. You let everything else slough away. That one kernel of knowledge is all you need.

Later, when twisted parody turns from unheeded warning to undeniable truth, you realize how good you had it then. Because underneath the blackness crowding your soul, down in the sludge filling you up inside, there was still hope.

When it happens for real, there is nothing left behind but death. And there isn’t any going back.   



End file.
